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#RealTimeChem Week 2015 Awards and Cook Off prize winners

Hi RealTimeChemists,

Once again I have to say a massive thank you every single chemist out there who took part in #RealTimeChem week. This community only exists because of you and it’s always great fun to witness the massive variety of chemists taking part from all over the world. It was nice to see tweet not just from regulars, but also a lot of newcomers. Welcome to #RealTimeChem I hope you enjoy your stay.

While the week event is over for another year, don’t forget that #RealTimeChem is a 24/7 project, so feel free to keep sharing chemistry whenever you want and engage with your fellow chemists around the world.

I have some very special thank yous to give out this year to the following folks:

Andy Brunning of @compoundchem fame. Not only did Andy design all of the graphics for this year, he also provided a really cool infographic competition of his own to celebrate #RealTimeChem Week. I look forward to working with Andy again in the future.

Katey Birtcher and all the folks at Elsevier’s SciTechConnect who ran the Blog Carnival this year and promoted the week. Your enthusiasm for the project has really kept me going and I loved the round ups.

Kudos to the Royal Society of Chemistry and all my friends at work for supporting the project and also getting on board from time to time.

Finally, thanks to Guido Kemeling, Editor-in-Chief of @ChemSusChem, who was kind enough to organise the prizes for the The Great #RealTimeChem Cook Off. Thanks to all the other ladies and gentlemen at WileyVCH for the support as well.

With all of these out of the way, it’s time to get onto this years awards. This was, as ever, ridiculously tough because there were many excellent tweets all deserving a prize. Thankfully, I have a few more prizes to give out this time around!

Below you will find out the results. Drum roll please?

TOP PRIZE WINNERS

The three tweeters below all win a #RealTimeChem Week 2015 mug of their very own like the below:

From Wednesday. Brian Wagner (@drummerboy2112) is one of THE chemists to follow on Twitter in my humble opinion and this simple demonstration of Boyle’s Law using a marshmallow, a flask and some suction was arguably the most popular tweet of the whole week in terms of retweets and favourites. Science can be fun and informative both at the same time.

From Wednesday. Laura van Laeren (@lauravlaeren) strikes again, sharing a lot of great tweets throughout the week, including several pictures of her beautifully painted finger nails. However, it was her starry night flask that caught a lot of attention this year and I couldn’t ignore it’s awesomeness. Pretty colours for the win!

From Saturday. Speaking of pretty colours, it was National Chemistry Week in the US at the same time, with colours being the big theme. Emily Hardy (@EmilyEHardy) snuck in on the Saturday to show off some fantastic chemiluminescence. Really spectacular.